Blendtec and Lancer Team Up to Bring Innovative Products to Market

The companies will showcase their first joint product offering—a blended ice/beverage station—at the National Restaurant Association show May 18–21, 2013

OREM, UT, May 9, 2013 – Blendtec®, a top manufacturer of high-end blenders, and Lancer®, a leading manufacturer of beverage dispensing systems, have entered into a joint-development agreement and will be showing a prototype of their first joint product offering at the National Restaurant Association (NRA) show this month.

The new platform is an automated station for making smoothies, frozen coffee drinks, and other beverages using refrigerated bag-in-box (BIB) ingredients and ice. This beverage station will give restaurants and other foodservice operators a fast, efficient, fully-contained system to expand their menus with popular smoothies and other cold beverages. When released, the beverage station will be commercially available for a unit price of under $9,000 with qualifying volumes.

“Smoothies are seeing tremendous growth in the beverage category and are becoming a mainstream offering in fast-food chains and restaurants,” said Reed Beus, CEO of Blendtec. “We’re excited to partner with Lancer to provide a complete solution that lets chains offer their guests high-quality fruit and dairy-based drinks.”

The new beverage station holds up to eight different refrigerated BIBs, which can include fruit purees, smoothie bases, coffee and dairy ingredients, and other ingredients. The unit features simple touch screen controls for selecting the flavor and size, and the cabinet contains refrigerated storage space for whipped cream and other add-in ingredients. Additionally, the beverage station has a built-in jar rinsing station, jar storage, and cup and lid dispensers.

“Efficiency and speed of service are priorities for many chains,” said Luis Alvarez, president of Lancer. “This blended ice/beverage station automates many of the traditionally manual processes involved in blending specialty drinks.”

I love working at Blendtec. It’s something special to be an integral part of a company that is its industry’s innovation leader and that’s growing faster than any of our competitors. It’s an opportunity I’d never want to miss.
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